


The Girl Cousins

by Jenwryn



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Marauders' Era, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-22
Updated: 2008-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellatrix, and Grimmauld Place, had a similar effect on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl Cousins

**Author's Note:**

> I have this idea that this is set when Sirius is only about twelve or thirteen years old; you know, so he's only been at Hogwarts for a relatively short while. I don't know if I've been chronologically perfect for that to be the case - but that is the image of have in my head.
> 
> Written for [trinityday](http://trinityday.livejournal.com), who requested it at [fallenmelody](http://fallenmelody.livejournal.com)'s massive fic-prompt-thingo. She asked for Bella/Sirius and "the thin line between love and hate".

There was something about Grimmauld Place; it had an effect on him. He supposed, if he thought about it in a rational way (but then, rational thinking was Remus’s strong point, not his), that it hadn’t always been like that. After all, he’d grown up there and felt comfortable enough, hadn’t he? For a while, anyway. But now… now that he had came back from Hogwarts there was something about it that smacked him in the face the moment he walked in through the front door. He wasn’t sure what it was – the darkness and the mystery, the heavy lace and the laced secrets, the strange, mundane claustrophobia of it all – and the feel of it calling to his blood in a way he preferred to deny.

Sirius drummed the heels of his shoes against the base of the armchair he’d been ordered into, letting the monotonous thudding morph slowly into the beat of something by Lennon; appropriate, by his calculations, for a kind of quiet rebellion. Part of him hoped that his mother would appear and – somehow – recognise its Muggle origins, just to get a reaction and break up the boredom.

To be honest, Sirius usually spent most of his time outside, at least, when he could escape the grasping curiosity of his mother regarding his whereabouts, the company he was keeping, and how many times he had drawn breath since breakfast, or whatever else it was she felt the suffocating need to keep track of. He was old enough now to escape her, though, so long as his father wasn’t at home, and so long as the house elves were otherwise occupied, even if it meant he had to climb out a window to earn his freedom. Sometimes one of the lads would come down to meet him but, given that none of the other Marauders actually lived in London, it wasn’t as though that were an easy thing to organise, or something that happened very often. Mostly he just tramped around on his own, or perhaps Regulus would trail along after him, which Sirius didn’t mind so much, even if the kid _was_ just a kid. After all, a kid was better than nothing. But there were days when Sirius couldn’t get outside, for neither love nor money: days when Kreacher was watching him from the corner of a beady eye; days when the heavens broke open and poured down rain more melancholy than his moods, so that even Sirius didn’t want to be out and about in it; days when it was just easier to shut himself up in his room and read smuggled-in motorcycle magazines. Worst were the days when he was stuck inside, under command of his mother and threat of his father, because the relatives had come to visit. Those were the most irritating times of imprisonment because not only was he confined indoors, but he was also invariably ordered into some room or other and told to stay there, with the promise that disobedience would result in him being sent to stay with his great aunt, _and she’ll never stand for any of this Gryffindor nonsense from you, my boy, let me assure you of that. _

Sirius really hated the holidays.

Today he’d been stuck in the room with the tapestry. By his mother’s logic, he supposed it was meant to be some kind of unsubtle reminder about the dues he owed his blood, regardless of the shameful colours of his school tie. Or perhaps it was an unveiled threat about how he’d end if he didn’t watch himself? Either way, at least it gave him something to look at, as he let his eyes trail along the sinuous curls of calligraphy, charmed against fading, and the contrasting dark blemishes where said calligraphy had been blasted free from the family tree. Upstairs he could hear the girl cousins giggling, Narcissa high-pitched and unmistakable even down two sets of stairs and along the length of the front hall. He could just imagine her sitting at the table and taking tea with his mother and Aunt Druella, poncing about with the shortbread and holding her teacup like a little primadonna. Sirius had only stayed long enough to scarf down a hazelnut slice in a messy enough manner to get himself, thank Merlin, banished from the table for a lack of manners which had, of course, been his goal in the first place (he might have behaved himself, had there actually been something worth eating, but he wasn’t a huge fan of shortbread and slices). Besides, the last thing he needed was hours of sitting and listen to the womenfolk whinging and whining about whatever it was that gotten their goat this week, and Cissy sucking up to the both of them. The girl cousins had been fun, once, but nowadays they’d gotten almost as brain-deadening as his mother. Well. Cissy had, anyway. He supposed it was a genetic imbalance in the Black line and he couldn’t really hold it against her, but that didn’t mean he needed to be stuck at a table with it; it was bad enough listening to her gripe to her friends about him at school. Downstairs might be dull, but at least it was quiet. Sure, Kreacher had been past the door a few times and glared in at him accusingly, but that was nothing for the record books. And even Reg seemed to have vanished into the woodwork somewhere rather than mooch around, as was his usual custom, wanting to do whatever it was that Sirius was doing. (Reg was all right really, a bit wet behind the ears perhaps, but anyway, he was his brother, wasn’t he? Sirius rather hoped he would be sorted into Gryffindor as well, and steadily ignored the inner voice that informed him, in no uncertain terms, that that wasn’t bloody likely).

Lennon changed into The Who as Sirius’s heels continued to drum, drum, drum…

“You know,” said a voice from the hall, “Auntie Walburga wouldn’t like it if we told her about the songs you were beating out of her favourite armchair, Sirius.”

The voice was unexpected, and made him jump, which was annoying. Sirius glanced up and around with a startled face, to find two of his three cousins standing just inside the doorway of the tapestry room. Andromeda looked barely awake and had a scattering of shortbread crumbs in her hair, perfectly matching the fine scattering of pale freckles across her face, and she gave Sirius a sleepy smile before wandering across the room, finding a random book, and laying down on a lounge chair with it over her face, presumably planning on a post-food nap. Bellatrix, on the other hand, remained leaning against the doorframe, her hands crossed across her small breasts, and a calculating look in her eyes.

It was the funny thing about Bella. If anyone ever asked him – and sometimes people did, at school – which of the girl cousins was his favourite, he always answered Dromeda. After all, that was what people expected, and she was sweet and good-natured, if somewhat unpredictable at times, being liable, as she was, to either kiss you or smack you over the head with a broomstick depending on which way the wind was blowing (all of which was most un-Slytherin of her, leading Sirius to suspect that she had somehow been mis-sorted and ought have been a Gryffindor like him). Besides, he genuinely did like her. But Bella… Bella got beneath his skin, somehow. He thought that she was a little like Grimmauld Place itself – all dark and mysterious and full of the things that he could have been but didn’t want to be, even if they called to him in his dreams sometimes.

“And how would you know anything about the songs I was ‘beating out’?” he demanded, letting his feet swing into silence.

Bellatrix crossed the space between them in two short strides and looked at him piercingly. “What, you think you’re the only one who’s ever heard of Muggle music?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that kind of thing beneath you Slytherins?”

Her lips arched into a smile. “Ever heard of ‘know thy enemy’?” she asked, throwing the question back at him and opening her eyes wide as though she’d just said the cleverest thing known to wizardkind.

Sirius rolled his own eyes, and made a small snorting noise.

“Besides,” Bella added, and seated herself smoothly on the arm of his chair, forcing him by her very presence to budge over and give her space, “It might be ‘we Slytherins’ but it’s still ‘us Blacks’, isn’t it?” And she looked at him hopefully, as though they hadn’t been on non-talking-terms all year at school, as though he didn’t hate everything she stood for, as though she didn’t hate everything _he_ stood for – as though they were little kids again and he was prone to following her around the way that Regulus now followed him. Which he had been; there’d always been something marvellous about Bella, as though the very way she breathed promised mischief.

And what was she doing now? Giving him a second chance? Offering him a way to redeem himself from his red and gold sins?

It was tempting, although he would never have admitted it. She was always tempting, as tempting as Grimmauld Place itself was, and in the same way, like dark chocolate or spells just the other side of bad. Everyone – ‘everyone’ being his friends – always thought that it was so easy for him, as though he’d been born a Gryffindor. And sometimes, sure, he thought he had been. But there were other days, other days when he felt all the knowledge of the Blacks stirring in his blood and it _called _to him. Just like she was doing now, sitting so close, with her long hair falling forwards to brush against his forehead. He breathed in the scent of her, Bella, and it made his body twitch. She could beckon him with her very existence, he thought; a mirror image of himself in female form, wired up in all the same ways, just applying it differently. It made him wonder what it would be like if they had united against the world – the two of them against the universe, him and Bella, Bella and him…

For the first time in his life, he seriously wondered what it would be like to kiss a girl. What it would be like to kiss _her._

She was gazing at him, a half-smile haunting the corners of her mouth.

He remembered that she’d asked him a question.

“I wouldn’t know.” He shrugged carelessly, the lie effortless. “Black’s just a name, isn’t it?”

Her eyes narrowed, then, and she pulled back from him, withdrawing the warmth of her touch and the perfume of her hair, and stalked over to the window, staring out at the street below, the rigidity of her back expressing her displeasure.

It’s a fine line, he thought absently, between love and hate.

But then, he supposed it was possible to do both at the same time.


End file.
